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Nobility 



WILLIAM LORD REED 



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AN AMERICAN NOBILITY 



AN AMERICAN 
NOBILITY 

BY 

WILLIAM LORD REED 

NOBILITY? 

"The Quality of Being Noble." 

NOBLENESS? 

"The Elevation of mind or condition, 
particularly of mind." 

AMERICAN NOBILITY? 

A Nobility of Mind, Aspiration and Achievement, — all 
clear visioned, high minded Americans who, on their own 
initiative and by their own efforts, have won the right 
to stand before the Tribunal of their own Conscience 
and say — "I have done the best I could; I have given 
the best that is in me to my country; My Country is 
America I' ' 




BOSTON 

THE STRATFORD COMPANY 

Publishers 

1920 



Copyright 1920 

The STRATFORD CO., Publishers 

Boston, Mass. 



The Alpine Press, Boston, Mass., U. 8. A. 



©C!.A5>?J 
AUG ^4 19 J 



Bebitateb to 

Unborn Jlmtrica 



The author desires to express his 
thanks to the Sun and New York 
Herald for their kind permission 
to reprint "Christmas 1917." 



AMERICA 
1913 - 1915 - 1917 - 1920 



1913 
Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin 



AN AMERICAN NOBILITY 



"Therefore, my brethren, a new nobility is 
requisite which is opposed unto all mob and 
all that is tyrranic and writeth on new tables 
the word ' noble '." 

"Our Land of Liberty !" we loudly boast. 

Bartholdi's sea-green statue holds aloft 
A beacon to the world's incoming host; 

What does it presage? I have questioned oft: 
Is it symbolic of our fathers ' creed — 
Or giant moth-flame of colossal greed? 

From Ellis Island to yon Golden Gate 
A land of plenty stretches, mile on mile ; 

Yet Poverty at Plenty's door needs wait; 
In vain we seek to find Contentment 's smile ; 

We Ve still our Newgates and our gallows-tree ; 

What, then, the purport of our "Liberty"? 

'Twas Freedom once! now "Liberty" instead 
On Freedom's soil uprears the Hydra head 

Of License, whose vile, fetid breath allures 

To Freedom's shore the rats of alien sewers. 
Our bragged "ambition" is but lust for gold; 
The honour of our daughters, bought and sold, 

Makes of our very streets a slave mart still; 

While on our knees we crave the Father's will 



2 AN AMERICAN NOBILITY 

Be done on earth as in the heavens ; See ! 
This is the substance of our "Liberty": 

Liberty — to breed and interbreed 

Till weVe assimilated every seed 
Of vice, disease, deformity, deceit, 
Avarice, lust, jealousy and greed. 

Liberty — each as he may aspire 

To harness lightning, and imprison fire, — 

Enslaving children to a soulless task; 

A speed insane the goal of our desire. 

Liberty — to wage a ceaseless strife, 
Man against man — the very bread of life 

Contention 's bone ; the Church of Christ itself 
Glutted with gold — and with dissension rife. 

But for their tears the All-High Gods would 

laugh ; 
Our gods % Mechanics and the Golden Calf ! 

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And do we dream these things can ever be 
Fused in this crucible called "Liberty"? 

Amalgamated in a race of men 

Predominant 1 And if they could — what then ? 

Then, when we've reared a race to rule the 

world, 
And it, at last, is into chaos hurled, 



AN AMERICAN NOBILITY 3 

The lust-born creature who has grown su- 
preme, 

Up from the dung-hill of our sorry scheme, 
Will rise serene to take his final chance, 
Draped in the mantle of his ignorance, 

And mount the spheres, that mock him as he 
struts 

Up from his blasted globe of pigmy huts, — 
Proud Prince of Self, Apotheosis of Greed, — 
The hybrid monarch of a mongrel breed. 



1915 
"Go find *% God!" 



AN AMERICAN NOBILITY 



I DREAMED : 

Up from the Earth we seemed to rise 
To claim our vaunted birthright in the skies. 
A host of disembodied souls, upled 
By the great super-creature, Emperor, bred 
In our late land, America. 

The goal 
Of the World's wanderlust. 

From pole to pole 
Become a vast, material domain, 
Builded and buttressed by rapacious Gain ; 
And crushed, inevitably, 'neath the heel 
Of Retribution. 

After the Age of Steel. 
After the wild, barbaric Tartar horde 
Had ravaged Europe, where the encarmined 
sword, 
Unsheathed by Teuton arm, had blazed the 

way 
Through butchered Belgium for the west- 
ward sway 
Of empire. 

After proud Albion's fall; 
Here, ruled by the master-mongrel of us all, 
Enveloped in an ignorance sublime, 
A hybrid breed, we builded for all time 
A wonderworld of radium and glass. 



8 AN AMERICAN NOBILITY 

Ere this Democracy had come to pass 
Through Anarchy to Monarchy. 

Surcease 
Of high endeavor ours. 

Expedient Peace 
Purged from our veins the red blood of our 

Sires, 
And paled the splendors of their altar fires. 
Our manhood atrophied. 

Swift, riding high, 
Like swarms of locusts darkening the sky, 
Swept yellow airmen, blotting out the sun; 
Inert, we realized our race was run ; 
Hell from the heavens rained. . . . 

We woke to find 
Ourselves but wraiths upon the vagrant wind. 

Then up and onward through ethereal space, 
Seeking within the Universe the place 

Prepared for us upon some shining strand, 
Vain-gloriously our monarch leads his band. 

Now we become embodied, and a shore 

Of verdurous woodland stretches wide before 

Our raptured eyes; when we're confronted, 
lo! 

By the gaunt figure of Geronimo : — 

"White men, Greeting! 
The land which you behold 



AN AMERICAN NOBILITY 9 

Js ours! 

America — 

The land from whence you come, 

Was bloodland! 

That is why 

You failed to find 

A firm foundation. 

Bloodland! 

Bloodland, filled with bones! 

Filled with the corpses of a people slain 

By ruthless hands, their heritage to gain. 

Your land? a land beneath the curse of Cain! 

Manured with bodies of a murdered race 

Who asked but in the sun a biding place; 
Ashed but the freedom of the earth and shy, 
Ashed but to live, and fearlessly to die 

And onward pass, their trust and faith pro- 
found, 

To their Great Spirit and His Hunting 
Ground. 
Americans! this is thy chastening rod; 
Go! our Great Spirit speaks — 
Go find thy God!" 



1917 
CHRISTMAS 



AN AMERICAN NOBILITY 13 



O god of Love and Life and Joy! 

With contrite lips we voice Your name; 
And ask that we may expiate 

In full our arrogance and shame; 

Now that we know You as You are — 
God, too, of Justice and of War. 



To You we raised our blatant praise ; 

To You we bent our mocking knees; 
With genuflections meek we masked 

The guilt of our hypocrisies. 



Bloated with pride, besot with greed, 
In strident tones we dared to make 

Vain repetitions of our creed, 
And crave Your grace, for Jesus' sake. 



That Jesus who, with lowly mien, 
Preached truth and love and poverty 

Unto the simple fisher folk 
Upon the shores of Galilee. 



Far is the cry from Jesus, God, 
To us, who now must kiss the rod. 

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But grant, God ! that we may yet 
Laugh at the stars in glad content; 



14 AN AMERICAN NOBILITY 

May learn, at last, Life's radiant Truth; 

Though War, the Scarlet Sacrament, 
Be the red price we have to pay, 

God, make us strong to pay it! then, 
Come ! with the glory of Your love, 

Into the humbled hearts of men! 



1920 
Justification through a New Nobility 



AN AMERICAN NOBILITY 17 



A NEW NOBILITY 

Pro aris et focis! 

America! direct your destiny! 
Build of your sons a new nobility! 

Now comes your Call to rise to higher things, 
And breed a kingly race from blood of kings. 

America, your father-pioneers 

Were princes of that blood; the yesteryears 
Of Golden Days were all fulfilled in them — 
Posterity of an imperious Stem. 

Created equal meant not equal birth; 
Were ever men born equal on the earth? 

Is erudition full-winged in the clod! 

Where backward trends a lineage but to 
God — 
Back through successive thinkers till we find 
The primal cognizance — first conscious mind. 

And that which stamps a man above his peers ? 
Springs that from earth, newborn? All down 
the years 
A thread of Thought has spun itself along, 
Through stress and strife, through maze of 
right and wrong 



18 AN AMERICAN NOBILITY 

Until, within some purposed human clay- 
It lights the flame of Leadership, today. 

Each man is born to his appointed place — 

Bone, blood, and brain, according to his race 
And forebears ; and his brief alloted span 
Of earth-life is to mount beyond the man 

Through Time evolved; and Ethnic Law holds 
due 

That he to his progenitors run true. 

So up! Americans! up and engage 
Beneath the Banner of your Heritage! 

Columbia cries : Do you ' ' run true ' ' who wait 
While paupered Europe surges through your 
gate 
And, interbreeding with your underbred, 
Brings forth a spawn of millions! Look ahead! 

Look but a few short years ahead and see 

Your great American majority — 
American majority that rules! — 
Bred from your tenements and gutters. 
Fools ! 

Each year is it not growing larger than 

The year before? and less American? 

Your power! the vote! withhold it from the 

hand 
Of alien born ; and all those in the land 



AN AMERICAN NOBILITY 19 

Who are unfit. Let no man vote until 
He qualifies by service, and who will 
Take his blood-oath to guard each foot of sod 
With life itself, as legacy from God. 

Then on the hearthstones of your homes relight 
The fires of Faith ! Let all who can unite 

Upon that ground where first their Grand- 
sire came 

And, there, perpetuate his honored name 
By sending to the Congress of their State 
One of his line, for Right to legislate. 

Americans ! bestir yourselves ! the hour 
Is pregnant with alarm ! holdfast your power ! 
Why let a rabble grasp your Government 
As you, complacent in a blind content, 
Prate World Peace, while th' Anarchic snake, 

uncurled, 
Spews it's red venom broadcast through the 
World? 

Read out the roll of your illustrious sons ! 
From Braddock's Field to Chateau-Thierry's 
guns 
Your Valiant Dead convoke their valiant 

breed ! 
Awake! arise! to their clear Call give heed. 
Americans! take now your dogged stand 



20 AN AMERICAN NOBILITY 

For all your Fathers ' hopes — your Native 

TiQnrl ? 



Land ! 



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This is the vision vouchsafed finite ken: 
Inspired endeavor will develop men, 
And women, nobly nurtured, who shall rise 
Through Thought transcendent to surmount 
the skies 
And read Life 's answer on Time 's open scroll — 
The destiny of man's immortal soul. 

Discovering at last "that golden key 
That opes the Palace of Eternity.' ' 
America, this glorious goal is yours 
Through Faith indomitable that endures; 
Faith in your Fathers and their Purpose High, 
Faith in yourselves — yourselves to justify ! 

Americans ! direct your destiny ! 
Build of yourselves a New Nobility ! 

4 ' my brethren, I consecrate you to be, and 
show unto you the way unto a new nobility. 
Ye shall become procreators and breeders and 
sowers of the future." 



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LIBRARY OF C0NG [S 

018 349 744 3 



